The present invention relates generally to on-line help systems and, in particular, to a method for providing an up-to-date table of contents of the help topics that are currently available to a user of the system.
It is common practice for programmed data processing systems to provide on-line assistance to an operator or user in response to a request for help, by displaying help information to the operator at a workstation. The assistance may consist of actual help information or of a menu or index of possible help topics from which the operator can select an item of interest.
Conventional help systems require an author to create a table of contents that reflects the individual components (akin to “chapters” and “books”) that are known to exist on the system. Typically, the table of contents includes links to various files that contain the desired help information to assist the user in navigating to that information. For this purpose, the table of contents might be written in a format such as that provided by the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), which facilitates such linking. The HTML links (i.e., HREFs) that lead to each chapter or book must be hard-coded to reflect the current location of the help information files. Once the information for the help system is installed on a user's computer, it is vulnerable to broken links because users can move or delete files, or web servers can change locations. This results in at least some portion of the table of contents ceasing to be functional. Additionally, if new information is added to the system by installing new software components, the new information will not appear in the pre-authored table of contents. This results in inaccessible or “orphan” content.
In the past, therefore, authors had to be careful to maintain existing links and fit their content within specific areas that were designated at the creation of the help system. Most links and document hierarchies were frozen, with only minimal customization possible and no cross-document linking permitted. This static type of system is not viable for large, comprehensive, and extensible help systems.
Other systems have been developed to provide users with available help information. One example of such a system is Microsoft WinHelp, which provides a table of contents view which is compiled by the author. The system provides the contents of the system that are available at the time of compilation. However, this system fails to provide the user with an up-to-date listing of available system information which is reflective of changes made to the system after the compilation (i.e., the system is not a dynamically-generated system).
Netscape NetHelp also provides a table of contents view. The table of contents view is implemented in JavaScript, using information provided by the author. This system, like the Microsoft WinHelp system, fails to reflect changes to the system occurring after the time of compilation.